Gaining Insights on Career Satisfaction for Women in Mining

This paper presents the experiences and views of women involved in the mining industry as determined from a questionnaire that was circulated across the Canadian mining industry. Globally, there have been significant studies done to understand the historic and global variety of women’s participation in this industry. The reason for focusing on women’s experiences here in Canada is because women’s percentage representation at 14.4% in the mineral industry workforce falls below the overall labour force average of 47.4%. Notably, a recent article in the Globe and Mail newspaper points out that adequate representation of women in leading of organizations is more of a matter of competitiveness and innovation rather than purely a “women’s issue”. This paper will provide some insight into the reasons why women join and stay in the mining industry and shed some light into the reasons for the overall low representation in this sector. The authors believe, as stated in a study from the London Business School, that a gender-balanced workforce is one way of providing the best results in areas that drive innovation. Women represent a key stakeholder group that can help enhance the mining industry’s sustainability through innovation.